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The Politics of Ecstatic Research
training as a “baby,” or initiate, in the winter dance society longhouse.
Further, he would have to place himself in the hands of ritualists, some
of whom he did not trust politically, in order to receive instruction.
He would be required to travel throughout the Salish world to dance
his spirit power in the presence of hundreds of others. He preferred
to carry out his work less publicly and in the economic and political,
rather than the spiritual, domain.
As is consistent with the cosmology of his community, bad thoughts
are regarded as capable of causing harm, and, in his case, motivated
this unbidden entity to take malevolent action against a political en-
emy. This elder political enemy and spiritual leader was “struck,” hit
with spirit power, while out fishing. He toppled out of his boat, the
victim of an apparent heart attack. The two separately told me their
own accounts of what had happened, and they were the same on the
central point that the leaders’ uncontrolled power had caused the dam-
age. The elder withdrew his political challenge. The politician had the
spirit helper “lifted” off, temporarily removed spiritually by a ritual-
ist. The process and the two accounts provided a glimpse into com-
munity life. They show the fear of dangerous people and beings, and
the dangerous outcomes. They also reveal the alienation experienced
by those who believe themselves to be outside the political channels
of the community; the sense of isolation experienced by members of
small families such as the man who was “struck,” and the difficulty
of belonging to a divided community, both for the dominant and the
subordinate. Here, community politics and indigenous epistemology
are not detachable. Whereas, as an anthropologist from outside the
community, I am not an obvious target of dangerous spiritual work,
my ability to understand this is connected to my ability to compre-
hend the nature of political life and to avoid carrying information be-
tween community members in a manner that could endanger some-
one else.
There are some instances of ecstatic experience with more direct po-
litical implications for me. In the late 1980 s and early 1990 s I worked
for several years on major treaty-linked litigation with a Washington
State tribe. Part of my task was to compile genealogical information
in order to connect the ancestors of present-day tribal members with
